PhoneBoy Says

While we don't officially move into the new house until the end of July, it sure seems like we're moving a lot of stuff right now! We are, but it's going into a storage unit.

Part of the process of getting the current house ready to sell is eliminating a lot of so-called "clutter" from the house. This means taking down a lot of personal family photos, moving out a lot of the extraneous stuff, and generally keeping the house looking nice. After coming back home Friday night, I can see that the wife has made a huge dent in the overall house clutter!

Meanwhile, I am attempting to do the same to my office, and it's no small task. I have a ton of stuff in my office, some of which I use regularly, most of which I don't. Much of it is out either under one of my tables and/or in a plastic crate. I do have some storage in my office as the attic storage spaces are in this room, but it's not always easy to get stuff in and out of those spaces. Also I can't exactly use those spaces now as I need to leave them available for someone to look in!

I probably have a van or truckload worth of stuff up in my office stacked and ready to go to the storage unit. Unfortunately, it probably isn't going right away. My wife had me bring down all the Christmas stuff from the attic. That and a bunch of other stuff already downstairs is waiting for us to go as well. Whether all that stuff will make it into storage tomorrow is another matter.

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the house with a lot less stuff in it. At least for a few weeks.

Lots of people are saying we have to wait until this fall to end the war in Iraq. I don't think so - Congress has about a month before they break for the summer. They could do something before then if we push them.

Bill Richardson has called on Congress to de-authorize the war now - not to wait until the fall. If Congress de-authorizes, Bush is stripped of his authority to continue the war - he would be legally required to start bringing the troops home.

Learn more and join the call on Congress now.

After a lot of soul searching, stressing over whether or not we can actually afford the place, and praying we weren't going to be too late to do it, we put in an offer on a new house in Gig Harbor, and it got accepted the same day! So now we're committed to buy it, though we should probably be committed because it's going to be a financially rough transition.

Here's a rough idea of what the new place looks like:

The place is huge! Large backyard. Enough rooms for everyone. A three-car garage with tons of storage built-in. Great neighborhood. Almost exactly what the wife wants! Meanwhile, we've got to get our existing place ready to sell. House needs a few cosmetic repairs, some of which are happening this week.

Nothing like Chuck E Cheese on a Friday night.

Not quite, but awfully close.

Over the past several days, my wifeended up finding "the perfect house." The good news is that it,overall, meets our needs better, it's much bigger, closer tocivilization, and in a really great neighborhood with people we know.The problem is, of course, it's more money. A lot more money.And it's not like existing home sales are exactly good right noweither. In short, there will be a lot of belt-tightening in thehousehold and a lot of duct tape will be applied to make sure the endsmeet and stay together.

Today we are signing an offer letter, which we are very certain willbe accepted. That sets a whole series of next steps in motion which aregoing to be both time-consuming and expensive. Between that, the GarageSale we are having tomorrow, and the business trip I have scheduled fornext week, I may be just a little pre-occupied. You'll probably see less output on my Vox blog during this process, or maybe you'll see more pictures. :)

I'm going to have to do something to earn extra money to buy duct tape. ;)I may end up doing (paid) writing for some other blogs and/or do otherthings that I can do in my spare time to bring in extra money. If youhave any legitimate suggestions, please email me directly(dwelch AT phoneboy DOT com), post them in the comments, send me a private message, or get a local phone number to call me (via Jangl).

I had an incident recently at work that involved someone emailing the general manager of my group over something I did without approaching me about the issue first. I did something really dumb that I should know better. It's one of those things that, if handled improperly, could have easily turned into an HR moment. However, I immediately claimed and took full responsibility for what I did. My management was very supportive and chose to allow me to resolve the issue on my own without involving HR. And, of course, it did resolve the issue and everything is back to normal.

I explained the issue to my wife, and she, being the mama hen that she is, was very concerned that I was doing something that was threatening my job. She was also concerned that I had every intention of continuing to do what I was doing--something that is specifically not part of my job description, but something I feel fairly passionate about. I would, of course, be careful to avoid the specific behavior which caused a near HR-moment, but of course that made her nervous. Call it stubbornness, and of course if I am not careful, I could be having an HR moment and put my job at risk.

However, it could be much worse. I could be my dad, whom has smoked longer than I've been alive, and now seems to have developed COPD (note to Dad: this might have been something to blog about). Despite this diagnosis, he's still smoking. Yes, he's taking cessation drugs to try and quit, etc, but to me, getting COPD is a gigantic blinking to neon sign to redouble the efforts to stop.

Every year our neighborhood does an annual Garage Sale. It's not like people around here don't do Garage Sales any other time of the year, it just happens to be when it's an organized, orchestrated affair. We are participating this year, mostly because we have stuff in a storage unit we are paying to keep there for no good reason. There's also a plethora of items the kids have outgrown that we'd like to get rid of and possibly get some cash for.

Over the long holiday weekend, my wife went through Jaden's room. She throughly went through his room, throwing out a couple of garbage bags worth of junk in the process and removing a bunch of toys to sell at the garage sale as well as giving a few of his toys and books to Gracie. Jaden't room is neat and orderly for the first time in what seems like forever! It remains to be seen how much trash will be uncovered throughout the rest of the house, but I suspect there will be more.

We are also using the opportunity to get rid of our dining room table and chairs, which have lasted nearly 10 years, but have definitely seen better days. My wife found a table at the local Amish furniture store, but it will be several weeks before it's made and delivered. The Amish furniture store wanted way too much for the chairs, so she found some cheaper chairs at Pier 1 that will fit the bill. Assuming our set gets sold, we may have to use one of my folding tables from my office as a makeshift dining room table until the new table arrives.

I have a few things up in my office I'd like to sell. However, I suspect I will have a hard time selling them as the kind of stuff I have isn't your usual garage sale fodder--and believe me, I've been to more than my share of garage sales over the years. Whatever doesn't get sold will probably get donated to charity. The neighborhood has arranged to have a charity come through the neighborhood on Monday to pick up everyone's unwanted items. I suspect they will be hauling stuff away by the truckload.

Thru Engadget Mobile, I found out that there is a trojan horse programout there that sends messages to a premium SMS number in thebackground, thus costing you a ton of money. According to the UnwiredView article, this is the first time that a particular trojan horse waswritten specifically for Series 60 devices. Series 60 is the operatingsystem used in the higher-end Nokia smartphones, such as the Nseriesand Eseries devices.

I do a detailed analysis of how this happens and what you can do about it over at the See into S60 blog.